


breathe deep

by bunnieju



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Flashbacks, Implied/Referenced Character Death, In Love and Traveling the Universe, Injury, M/M, Strangers to Lovers, no beta we die like gods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:47:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29044842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnieju/pseuds/bunnieju
Summary: Mark and Ten met by a one in a million chance on Star Stop AZ-20030.
Relationships: Mark Lee/Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten
Kudos: 17
Collections: Challenge #4 — Awaken The World





	breathe deep

“Mark! Can you hear me?”

Sirens blared overhead as Mark awoke with a groan and a splitting headache beating the inside of his skull. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes, only to shelter his eyes with his hands immediately from the bothersome rapid flickering of the command room light. He shot forward from his seat in the command room to hit half-blindly at the ship’s emergency settings on the right panels and power down the ship into repair mode to stop further malfunction. The lights flickered for a few seconds more before dimming.

“You’re awake, I was worried you hit your head or something,” Ten sighed in relief over the intercom. “I’m going to need you to manually overdrive the door controls, they’ve malfunctioned too and have me locked in storage.”

Mark took a few seconds to process what he was being told before his brain properly caught up to the situation and he leaned to the left panels to manually press the intercom button and reply. 

“What...what happened? My head hurts, I think I hit it.”

“Shit, are you okay?” Ten questioned, concern thick in his voice. “I think we had some system malfunctions that stopped the outer sensors and accidentally auto-drove straight into a group of meteoroids. You can guess the further damage that’s probably caused.”

"I'm just a little dizzy," Mark groaned, leaning back into his chair. “Fuck. How fucked.”

Mark stared at the multitude of colorful panels in front of him for a few moments, rethinking his life up to this moment. If he’d known he’d be piloting his own ship, he’d have taken ship repair courses back in university instead of banking on his failed astrobiology career to carry him through the rest of his life.

“Okay, I’m doing a manual overdrive of all systems,” Mark said, closing the navigation panel and opening the troubleshooting panel. Within a few seconds, he typed in this clearance code then exited back to open the manual command panel and unlocking all the doors on the ship. He then allowed himself to lean back once more in his chair to close his eyes in an attempt to bring relief to his pulsing headache.

...

_Mark and Ten met by a one in a million chance on Star Stop AZ-20030, at the edge of System R-4890001._

_“Good news: the milkshakes here are to fucking die for. Bad news: I’m stranded here until the next Hyper Jump Ship comes around this middle of nowhere Star Stop, which is in like a month ‘cause the nearest planet is in aphelion and there’s virtually no tourism right now so no reason for frequent ship schedules,” Ten spoke to the video recorder he’d set up across from him at the edge of the table._

_“I’ve got nothing to do but kill time, so expect more uploads to my gaming section! Well, if the Starlink is fast enough to run the games on my cloud storage, but I have no clue since Tech Blue aren’t the internet providers in this star system...maybe I should be thinking about finding a place to stay first...”_

_Ten was lucky, and he knew it, so he tended to be reckless — anyone would be if they were a successful influencer, sponsored by Tech Blue, one of the universe’s biggest Starlink providers. His recklessness often ended up with him in similar situations where he was stranded, so he wasn’t as worried, but this was the first time he’d been stranded off a planet and he had no clue how to work around it on Star Stops._

_“I need to look for housing now, so I guess this is goodbye for now? Don’t worry, my regular posting schedule still applies so turn on my notifications now! Stay shining, 10velys!” Ten assured that the live stream was off before pushing the rest of his milkshake away and lightly banging his head against the diner table repeatedly, arms laying flat on the table around his head._

_“Is the milkshake that bad?” A voice sounded from above and Ten startled, knocking the milkshake off the table, straight onto the server that had come around to check on him._

_“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” Ten’s eyes widened in panic and he slid out of the booth to help the server clean._

_“No, it’s my fault, I’m sorry,” The server gave him a sheepish smile. “Sit down it’s fine, I’ll clean it up.”_

_“Let me help, at least.”_

_The server looked between the milkshake on his white uniform shirt, the mess on the floor, Ten, and the otherwise empty diner, before turning back to Ten. “Okay, but don’t tell my boss or he’ll have my ass about the uniform and letting you help.”_

_And they got to work._

_Fifteen minutes later, with the server in a clean uniform and the floor clean, Ten sat back down but surprisingly the server brought him a new milkshake._

_“Thanks for your help…” The server trailed off, realizing he never got Ten’s name._

_“I’m Ten,” Ten smiled._

_“I’m Mark, nice to meet you,” Mark grinned back. “This one’s on the house as an apology for scaring you.”_

_Mark had a ‘boy next door’ look to him, a welcoming tone, and a charming smile that made Ten’s heart feel emotions he hadn’t known he could feel after his star-struck high school days._

_“Nice to meet you too...I’m kind of stranded here, do you know anywhere I can find a place to stay?”_

_Ten was lucky — for now — so he would be as reckless as he wanted while he still could be._

...

“We should have invested in a ship companion AI,” Ten’s voice filled the silence of the command room, followed by footsteps leading up to where Mark was seated. A hand gently ran fingers through Mark’s hair and Mark leaned into the touch without opening his eyes.

“Yeah,” Mark hissed as the hand made contact with a sore spot on the side of his head. “We wouldn’t have had to steal the Ship Maintenance for Dummies books from that Star Stop’s library and spend weeks reading through them.”

“Good news: you’re not bleeding. Bad news: that bump looks nasty, but the med-bay scanners are down.”

“Let’s get on with repairs quickly then,” Mark opened his eyes to meet Ten’s eyes with a small smile that Ten returned instantly. 

...

_Mark was godsent in Ten’s life as the diner server managed to get a room rented for Ten in the Star Stop staff dorm. Coincidentally, it was a room right next to Mark’s and Ten often found himself in Mark’s company whenever they both weren’t working._

_“So, you’re an influencer. What’s that like?” Mark placed the diner take-out containers on his coffee table and sat down on the floor next to Ten, back resting on the front of his small sofa._

_Ten immediately began sharing out food to both their plates. “I get paid to travel and film myself doing bullshit, I’d say it’s pretty good.”_

_“No, I mean, what’s the day to day like? Not the simplification.”_

_“Honestly, it’s tiring. I spend up to 12 hours of my day filming, editing, and in video meetings with my sponsor. And when I’m not doing that, I’m trying to maintain my relationship with my viewers by talking to them on social media or in my message server.”_

_“You must love it a lot to dedicate yourself to it like that.”_

_Silence filled the room for a moment as they both started eating. It was his dream when he was just a teenager, to get paid to travel the universe filming his experiences and he’d achieved it by pure chance through the small gaming platform he’d built across multiple social media services._

_“I mean, I get a decent pay,” Ten laughed._

_“You don’t love it?”_

_“No, I do...I did at least.”_

_“What happened?”_

_“This was my dream, but I guess the stars were blinding me when I started off. I’ve been at this every day for six years and I haven’t been home in all that time...” Ten played with his thumbs, before picking up his chopsticks. “Sometimes I check my personal social media feeds and see so many of the people I once knew moving on with their lives, settling down, but I’ve been traveling alone since I dropped out of university, never staying in one place for more than a few days. I’ve considered stopping, but...I can’t.”_

_“Because this is the only thing you've been banking on, so choosing a different path seems impossible?” Mark put down his chopsticks, turning to look at Ten with those glassy eyes Ten had learned to adore._

_“Yeah. I've been doing this since I was fresh out of high school, I just don't think I can ever settle down and do something more...anchored to one place because if I do I might lose momentum on my career and drown."_

_“You won’t drown,” Mark shook his head, sincerity dripping in his voice. “But maybe this is where you can take some time to think about the rest of your life, Ten. For now, just breathe, I won’t let you drown.”_

_Ten took a deep breath, letting the air in his lungs help settle the turmoil in his mind._

  
  


...

“Shit, we can’t fix this internally anymore,” Mark cursed, resting his hurting head against Ten’s side. “The shielders are broken and meteoroids damaged the south-east sensors.”

“It’s fine, I’ll suit up and go fix them.” Ten turned to properly embrace Mark’s tired form and gave him a gentle kiss on the lips. “No big deal.”

The heat of the engine room combined with the cooling system being nonfunctional while the ship was being repaired made it difficult to breathe as is, then Mark’s injury made enduring it a hundred times harder than usual. Mark wanted to offer to go fix them himself, but there was no way Ten would let him, in the state Mark was in.

“Breathe slow and steady, baby, let’s get you out of here,” Ten lead him away from the engine room and back to the command room, before heading to the dock bay. Mark rested while he waited for Ten to signal that he was ready, something that didn’t take that long.

“Suit three coms check, Mark, can you hear me?” Ten’s voice sounded over the coms.

“Yeah, I hear you,” Mark pulled up the video feed of the outer cameras and the manual command panel. “Suit check, is everything fully operational?”

“Everything is fully operational. Clear?”

“I can’t use the sensors so keep an eye out, but the cameras are clear. Opening the dock in ten.”

“Clear. Ready to shipwalk.”

“Okay, be careful, I love you,” Mark bit his lip, hand hovering over the dock controls.

“I love you, too.”

“Three...two...one...remember to breathe.”

Mark watched as the Ten left the dock, held by the rope anchor, and magnetized to the side of the ship, then made his way to the shielders on the top of the south side.

...

_Ten had decided to leave his career and return home. It’d been difficult, and he’d caused hurricanes on social media of people in disbelief that he was retiring, but sitting in the diner watching Mark work, having nothing to do for the first time in six years was liberating._

_“How d'you end up in this blackhole?”_

_Mark paused, before laughing hysterically. “I wanted to go to Earth.”_

_“Earth…?” Ten was confused. “What IP?”_

_“Earth 0000.”_

_“You — You wanted to go to ground zero?” Ten tilted his head in further confusion. “Ground zero has been uninhabitable and irreparable for over half a millennia, now.”_

_“But do you think we shouldn’t care about it anymore?”_

_“I mean, yeah...it’s been depleted of all its resources and pointless to try and salvage, it’s what WhiteStar Corp. say in the H.S. database.”_

_“When I worked at Station E-1190, I’d spend my free time trying to catch a glimpse of Earth 0000 and I did — but only once for about two minutes.” Mark sighed, leaning on the counter and making eye contact with Ten. “It was beautiful, Ten. It was so green and blue and full of life, but then I calculated that I was seeing the Earth of 2003. Light travels in a way that we’d be able to witness the light of stars long after the stars themselves have burned out, and this concept also applies to the light reflected off planets. I’d fallen in love with something we once were.”_

_“You worked at a research station?”_

_“I’m an astrobiologist -- you know terraforming, planet evaluations, species documentation, and all that boring jazz.”_

_“Oh fuck, you’re like at doctorate level in astrobiology? Terraforming...that’s fucking huge in the industry...Why are you at a diner in the middle of nowhere then?"_

_Mark shook his head, busying his hands with cleaning. “As I said, I wanted to go to Earth."_

_“Why do you want to go back to ground zero?”_

_“I want to return to Earth because I want to restore ‘ground zero’, fix the mistakes of our past — of my past. We've abandoned our home after suffocating it with our own two hands.” Mark sighed. “I put in a request to plan a mini-expedition to the Milky Way, to study the state of the planets nearly a millennia into our abandonment. It was rejected within a day, cited to be too costly and pointless. I just...left. I'd spent my whole childhood banking on astrobiology but it was so confining working for corporations.”_

_“...Let’s go anyway.”_

_“What?”_

_“There’s nothing for you on this dead-end Star Stop, Mark.” Ten gave Mark a sad smile. “I...I still don’t quite understand the appeal of Earth, but I do understand the pure love and dedication in your eyes — it’s something I’ve lost way too long ago and miss dearly.”_

_“I’m just a failed astrobiologist, I don’t know anything about maintaining a ship nor do I have the equipment or ship.”_

_“I mean, there’s a lot of distance between here and Earth 0000,” Ten rolled his eyes playfully. “There’s so much we can do to get what we need...think of it as an adventure.”_

_“Don’t you think it'll be bad for your career if we get arrested sneaking into the Milky Way without authorization?" Mark raised an eyebrow._

_Ten lightly smack his own forehead with his hand. “Fuck, I forgot.”_

_“No, don’t be sorry. No matter what you decide, this is only the start of the rest of your life.”_

...

“The shielders...nothing’s wrong with them? They’re not broken.” Ten’s confused voice came through the coms.

“What do you mean? The ship says they’re broken.” Mark leaned forward, tapping through the panel rapidly to pull up diagnostics.

“The energy receivers are fully functional, the inner wires are fine, and we have enough energy for them to work properly. I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“Maybe something got into the projectors? Try opening them up.” Mark furrowed his eyebrows as diagnostics continued to say that the shielders are broken.

Mark slumped in his seat, resigning to watch the south cameras to the sound of Ten’s breathing over the coms. Ten’s breathing became increasingly deeper and louder and Mark grew nervous.

“Mark?”

“Yeah?”

“Something’s wrong — something’s terribly wrong, the shielders are overheating,” Ten’s breathing was as unstable as his voice.

Mark’s heart thumped loudly against his chest. “Come back inside, I’m powering off the south side. I’ll turn it off as soon as you get into hallway two so that you’re still getting oxygen.”

“Okay, I’m coming,” Ten distress was clear but all Mark could do was watch.

All Mark could do was watch as an explosion overtook the south side and knocked him off his chair, plunging the ship into darkness before the emergency protection kicked in, turning on emergency lights, and sealing off damaged parts of the ship.

“No, no, no,” Mark scrambled off the floor and took off down halls and through rooms. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Mark slammed into the dock bay’s door, unable to open it due to it being sealed off, before turning back to the med-bay and pressing his face against the window to catch a view of the south of the ship.

Mark’s knees gave out as he caught sight of Ten’s body still in the suit and attached to the ship’s anchor, floating limply along the side of the ship. His mind caught up a moment after, emotions coming in droplets, then in waves.

Breathing in. Breathing out. Breathing in. Until the violent waves pushed screams from his mouth and tears from his eyes, shaking with his wails and slumping over on the floor with no strength left in his body.

...

_Ten left after a month on Star Stop AZ-20030, sad to leave Mark behind, but ready for the rest of his life. He returned to his home planet and got a job at a library while he learned how to be home and settled the anxiety of attachment to the people he claimed to love. An upward battle, but he wanted to succeed — if not for him, then for Mark, who he’d call every other day, hoping one day they’d be able to see each other in person._

_And they’d see each other again years later, when Ten stepped off the ship docked at Star Stop AZ-20030, bee-lining it to the familiar diner from so long ago._

_“Hello, welcome StarGaze Diner! How may I —” Mark looked up a few moments after the door hissed open._

_“I heard the milkshakes here were to die for, came just to try them,” Ten stared back at Mark with a shit-eating grin._

_Mark said nothing, just making his way around the counter without breaking eye contact and slamming his body into Ten’s open arms with the weight of lightyears worth of love._

_“Are you ready for the rest of our lives? It’s a long way from here to Earth.”_


End file.
